At dusk, on this day, all of New York state and parts of 7 neighboring states and parts of eastern Canada were without electricity in what would become known as The Great Northeast Blackout.

It hit at the height of rush hour.

People were trapped at work in their offices, in elevators and trains.

An estimated 800,000 people were trapped in the New York City subway.

It was caused by a power surge at 5:16pm in Ontario, Canada, which overloaded the network, pulling down other overloaded lines. 30 million people in total were thought to be affected.

Power was restored by the morning.